Wednesday, February 14, 2007

On Feb 2, 2007 or so, Yahoo started a Malayalam Portal in Unicode Malayalam, and shortly thereafter, we noticed that contents were being lifted out of Malayalam blogs, contents that were copyrighted by each author.

Among the worst affected was Suryagayatri. At least 5 recipes from her Kariveppila Blog were taken, slightly modified (pictures, re-arrangement of sentences) and placed on Yahoo's Malayalam Portal.(Ref: English Version of what happened, Screenshots of violation)

Yahoo India also took, without permission, contents from http://www.puzha.com/. Puzha.com maintains that they had bought the original content, which was then stolen by Yahoo India. (Ref: Puzha blog entry detailing this theft)

When we learned about the infringement and protested against it, Yahoo's content provider, Webdunia, removed the contents. So far, the blogger's efforts (and our collective efforts) to procure an official response from Yahoo have been in vain.

Yahoo.com directs us to Yahoo! India as they claim Yahoo India is a separate entity. Yahoo India on the other hand directs us back to Yahoo.com, making us run in circles with no clear response.

While we were researching Yahoo's content providers, we came across a provider, Webdunia (mentioned before). From our investigation, we found that they are the ones who collect information/features/articles to be posted on Yahoo India.

With the knowledge that we had made a formal complaint to Yahoo/Yahoo India, Webdunia came forward with vague options for remuneration as well as an apology from Webdunia and not from Yahoo India.

Suryagayathri has refused all offers because she/we believe that Yahoo is solely responsible for this mistake and should make a formal acknowledgment. In addition, Webdunia wanted us to quickly and quietly accept an offer so that they would not lose their contract with Yahoo India.

4 comments:

Is this a decent way to launch a portal? Yahoo! India must acknowledge their mistake and compensate the blogger for the damages. What we saw till now is an "anonymous" statement from supposedly T.Sasimohan of webduniya.Yahoo! India should post their apologies on their portal. If webdunia is the content provider of the portal, they can also do it there ! If webdunia can post the stolen contents, they can very well post the apologies also on behalf of Yahoo! India. So I think it is appropriate to see the apologies or any statements regarding compensation on the Yahoo! India portal, not as a comment to SuryaGayatri's post regarding content theft.